Tag Archives: Internet of Things

New THaW Patent: Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication

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The THaW team is proud to announce the issuing of a patent for apparatuses, methods, and software for secure short-range wireless communication.

With the number and diversity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices growing, cryptography is not a blanket solution for secure message exchange. Devices may encounter dozens or hundreds of new devices each day, and many of these new IoT devices will have limited or non-existent user interfaces, making this manual secret entry even more cumbersome than configuring existing devices.

This work focuses on a secure method to wirelessly transmit data between devices that are in short-range of each other. In this setup, the sending device has two antennas and two transmitters. One transmitter sends a data signal via the first antenna, which is closer to the target device than the second antenna, and another transmits a jamming signal via the second antenna. Because of the close proximity between the target device and the first antenna, which results in a stronger signal, the receiving device can retrieve the data despite the presence of the jamming signal. This ensures a secure-communications process between the sending device and the target device.

To learn more, check out the patent. If you are interested in taking advantage of this patent, please contact us.

Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software for Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,894,920 B2. February 06, 2024. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11894920B2/en

See also: Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software For Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,153,026, October 19, 2021. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11153026B2/en

See also: Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. CloseTalker: secure, short-range ad hoc wireless communication. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), pages 340–352. ACM, June 2019. doi:10.1145/3307334.3326100. [Details]

VibeRing: An out-of-band channel for sharing secret keys

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Health-oriented smart devices, such as a blood-glucose monitor, collect meaningful data when they are in use and in physical contact with their user. The smart device’s (“smartThing’s”) wireless connectivity allows it to transfer that data to its user’s trusted device, for example a smartphone. However, an adversary could impersonate the user and bootstrap a communication channel with the smartThing while the smartThing is being used by an oblivious legitimate user. 

To address this problem, in this paper, we investigate the use of vibration, generated by a smartRing, as an out-of-band communication channel to unobtrusively share a secret with a smartThing. This exchanged secret can be used to bootstrap a secure wireless channel over which the smartphone (or another trusted device) and the smartThing can communicate. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of this system, which we call VibeRing. We describe the hardware and software details of the smartThing and smartRing. Through a user study we demonstrate that it is possible to share a secret with various objects quickly, accurately and securely as compared to several existing techniques.

Sougata Sen and David Kotz. VibeRing: Using vibrations from a smart ring as an out-of-band channel for sharing secret keys. Journal of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, volume 78, article 101505, 16 pages. Elsevier, December 2021. doi:10.1016/j.pmcj.2021.101505. ©Copyright Elsevier. Revision of sen:vibering.

VibeRing: Using vibrations from a smart ring as an out-of-band channel for sharing secret keys

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A recent THaW paper was nominated for Best Paper at the IoT conference:

With the rapid growth in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with wireless communication capabilities, and sensitive information collection capabilities, it is becoming increasingly necessary to ensure that these devices communicate securely with only authorized devices. A major requirement of this secure communication is to ensure that both the devices share a secret, which can be used for secure pairing and encrypted communication. Manually imparting this secret to these devices becomes an unnecessary overhead, especially when the device interaction is transient. In this work, we empirically investigate the possibility of using an out-of-band communication channel – vibration, generated by a custom smartRing – to share a secret with a compatible IoT device. Through a user study with 12 participants we show that in the best case we can exchange 85.9% messages successfully. Our technique demonstrates the possibility of sharing messages accurately, quickly, and securely as compared to several existing techniques.

To learn more, check out the video presentation here.

Sougata Sen and David Kotz. VibeRing: Using vibrations from a smart ring as an out-of-band channel for sharing secret keys. In Proceedings of the International Conference on the Internet of Things (IoT), page Article#13 (8 pages), October 2020. ACM. DOI: 10.1145/3341162.3343818